Ted Talk 102: Ask Ted: How Do I Stop Sabotaging My Health And Fitness Efforts On The Weekend?

Ted Ryce: Are you a person who eats right and exercises five days a week, but when the weekend comes around, you kind of fall off track and you feel like you undo all the progress that you did during the week? Well, guess what? You’re not alone at all. This is a common thing that happens and something that we’re going to dive into today, on today’s Q&A episode. That’s right, we’re taking a question from the listener, and I’m going to answer it.

First of all, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Ted Ryce, coach to entrepreneurs, executives, and other high-performing professionals. And you’re listening to the Legendary Life podcast. 

So, let’s jump right into the question, and then answer it. So, this question comes to us from Paul from California.

He says, “Hey, Ted, I love this show and I have a question for you. How do you stop sabotaging your health and fitness efforts during the weekend? I work out and eat right five times per week. And every weekend, I tend to overeat and over drink and every Monday, I feel like a failure. How do I break this cycle? Thanks for all you do.”

Paul, thank you for sending in this question. It’s a great question, and it’s something that I’ve answered in the past. But today, I want to try to take a different approach. And before I get to the answer, I want to tell you, this is the question: what you’re really asking here is how do we enjoy our lives and still lose fat and maintain that fat loss over time? That’s the question, isn’t it?

Because it’s easy to be super strict, isn’t it? It’s easy. It’s easy in the sense that you know if you eat chicken and broccoli three times a day, or even five times a day, you lose fat. 

But how do you maintain a strict diet like that when you’re eating with your family, you’re taking your wife out to dinner for her birthday, or you’re taking your husband to lunch to celebrate Father’s Day, or whatever the occasion is.

Or hanging out with your friends, and your friends aren’t on a diet. They’re not trying to lose weight. Or maybe they don’t need to, they’re out partying, but you feel like you’ve got to order the salad. 

So I want to clear something up here. Before I get into this, because this is the question. And so many people make assumptions about me and I want to tell you is:  I’m like you, I’m not perfect.

And I love going to restaurants, especially when the chef’s name is on the dessert menu. I also love to travel. I think one of the best ways to experience a different culture - because that’s my thing, I don’t travel to experience, vacation spots, I travel to experience the cultures because it’s transformed my life - one of the best ways to do that is through experiencing the food of that culture. 

Because I believe that food goes way beyond just fuel. Certainly, that’s true at a physiological level. But I believe that food is also how we connect with other people. For example, grandma’s apple pie, mom’s Thanksgiving stuffing, dad’s barbecue, who wants to give all that up, just so that you could “be healthy.”

And the good news is, you don’t have to. I’ve eaten my dad’s barbecue and my step mom used to make great cornbread stuffing. And I’ve traveled and eaten Pad Thai in Bangkok, pho in Vietnam, bachata in Malaysia, guacamole and tacos in Mexico. Don Sirloin, anyone? Arepas, in Colombia, rodizio, which is the steak buffet place in Brazil. 

We can enjoy our lives and still lose fat. And that’s lesson number one, there’s a way to do this.

There’s a way to enjoy your life and to stay lean, and to be healthy. I say that because so many people don’t believe it’s possible. Either it’s all enjoyment, or no enjoyment. Either it’s pizza, pasta, chocolate lava cake for dessert, or it’s chicken and broccoli five times a day. And that’s not true. 

So, there’s a way to do this. 

So there’s a way to enjoy your life and to stay lean. 

The second lesson is it’s going to take work. And most people nod their head, “Yeah, I know. It’s going to take hard work. Chicken and broccoli, yeah.” No, that’s not the hard work. 

The hard work isn’t going on a strict diet. Everyone can do that and lose weight.

The hard work is getting away from this binary approach where you’re either on the diet or off the diet. This is how you make it into a lifestyle, folks, you can’t go on a diet. You’ve got to stop going on diets. That’s the work I’m talking about. This is going to take work to reprogram your mind. 

Diet culture has you believe, “Well, I’ll go on a diet.” Yeah, and you go on a diet, a diet that you know you’re going to get off of, and then you gain the weight back. What kind of ridiculousness is that?

And those are the people who I deal with mostly in my coaching clients, people who’ve dieted. So they know it’s possible to get results. But they’ve got to be really strict, and they can’t maintain it. 

So the work here that I’m talking about, is you’re going to have to shift your perspective and take a different approach. And it’s very hard to do that.

Because what are we talking about? We’re talking about behavior change, the knowledge part is easy. Everyone who listens to this show has a high IQ, above average intelligence. Intelligence is not your problem. Now there is a lot of information too, but even when I give my clients the right information, it’s still a struggle to change behavior. Behavior change is the hard work we’re talking about.

Number three, is that to do this behavior change—because it’s much harder. It’s easy to learn things intellectually all it’s about calories in, calories out how many grams of protein, or what type of workouts do I need to do? That’s the easy stuff. It’s the habit change, the behavior change, that’s hard. And to do this work, you’re going to have to have a strong reason why.

It sounds cliche, but it’s 100% true. Think about when you show up to your work, whether you have a business or you’re working for someone else, you show up even when you don’t want to. Now maybe you take a day off here and there, like, “Ah, I don’t know, I think I might have the Rona, so I need a couple days.”

But you show up most of the time, even when you don’t want to, because you have a strong reason why, you’re working towards something, maybe it’s financial gain, maybe it’s you’re really passionate about you’re doing, whatever it is, you have a strong reason why. 

Think about when you’re a parent and you don’t feel like being one, you don’t feel like wiping butts, if you got a young kid, you don’t feel like disciplining if you’ve got a teenager, but you do it anyway because you’re committed to that child.

What you’re going to have to do is have a strong reason why you’re committed to yourself. I’ll tell you something, where do you get this from? That’s a really good question. 

And I’ll tell you a short story about what helped me recently. As many of you know, my dad passed away in October, I’ve shared that many times. And his health started failing months before that in May. But what I probably haven’t shared enough of is that when I went to Vero Beach, Florida, which is affectionately known as Heaven's Waiting Room—so terrible, Heaven's Waiting Room.

One of the things that completely changed my view on this and made me take health and fitness – I was already taking health and fitness really seriously. But this is what changed the game for me, in Heaven’s Waiting Room in Vero Beach, I saw people who were not living their lives, but were still alive. And their lives were being dependent on other people.

They can’t get around on their own, can’t do things on their own, can’t go shopping on their own, losing their independence, needing assisted living, needing nurses, needing physical therapists and occupational therapists, and not great ones that actually help you make progress, but ones that are paid by your Medicare – Medicare? Medicaid? Medicare, I think, when you’re 65, and they’re not there inspiring you.

They’re out of shape. They’re overworked. They need help themselves, then they see you and you’re like, well, so far gone, they’re not that motivated to take care of you. We have a long-life expectancy in the United States. 76 for men, I believe, or 77. And I think it’s like 80 for women, 81/80 for women.

Sorry for being off a few years there. But I don’t want to interrupt to go look it up. But it’s something like that. But what they don’t tell you is that the years at the end of most people’s lives are spent like those I’m talking about in Heavens Waiting Room. I don’t want to be in Heaven’s Waiting Room, is what I’m trying to say.

If I’m going to drop dead from a heart attack, I don’t want to be because I couldn’t get up out of my chair. And maybe I forgot to take my blood pressure medication and I had a stroke or a heart attack. I want it to be because I was out doing something. I want to live my life because what a lot of people end up doing at the end of their lives from what I saw in Vero Beach, Florida, they’re just waiting to die.

They’re doped up on painkillers. They’re watching TV. They’re arguing about politics. They’re doing a lot of things just to pass the time because they can’t do much else. And it was so profound to see that to be around it, it forever changed me, I do not want to end up like that. 

So knowing your why, having a strong reason why, getting in touch with that is super important.

I want to also give you a little bonus tip here, because sometimes our motivation waxes and wanes, usually based on how much stress we’ve got going on in our life. When the stress clears, we’re like, “Oh, gosh, okay. I’ve got a great moment here. Oh, wait a minute, where did that belly come from, I must have been eating my emotions, I’ve got to do something about this.” 

When that moment strikes, take advantage of it. Because if it goes away, it might be a long time and a lot of pounds more before it comes again – a little bonus tip for you there.

So the fourth lesson is that you’re going to have to learn how to balance the budget. One of the reasons why it’s so easy to talk to the high-performers I work with is they’re all in business. And they all kind of get the importance of numbers. I’ve worked with high performance sales professionals. So they’ve got sales quota, they know their numbers from the previous quarter and they know what their numbers should be for this quarter. They know their numbers.

And other entrepreneurs that I work with, they know their numbers, too. Now they have accountants and other people that help keep track of it, but they know that the numbers need to match up. You need to make more money than you spend if you want to stay in business, and you want to pay yourself, or the business doesn’t last.

So in terms of fat loss, we also have a budget, we have a budget of food that we can eat every day. And I want you to pay attention here because this changed everything for me and it changes everything for my clients. 

Because what we hear out in the media is that: “Oh, I can’t eat carbs. Oh, I can’t eat sugar, I can’t have a soda with sugar in it. I can’t eat dessert, I got to give up everything that I love. All the foods that I’m currently eating, I need to stop eating those and eat all these foods that I’m not currently eating that I don’t really love.”

What I’m trying to tell you is this: budgets are budgets, but we all have a certain amount of calories that we can use every day, or let’s say, you know, just to go with the analogy, spend every day. So if you want to eat key lime pie, you can eat key lime pie, but it comes out of the budget and you have to spend less elsewhere to fit the budget.

So you can have the drinks, you can have the dessert, you can have the pizza, you can have the burgers, but you have to manage the budget. This is a tough one, both mindset wise, and also learning it. 

It’s easy to say, but it requires—I mean, my coaching program, it’s like getting your MBA, your executive MBA, you’re going to learn about the foods that you’re eating at a deep level so that you start to understand the budget.

Because right now, you don’t know if you’re eating 4000 calories, 5000 calories, 3000 calories, you don’t know, most people don’t, they have no idea. How many calories was in your breakfast? How many calories was in your lunch? How many calories was in your dinner?

And the thing that people try to do is they try to get strict. So instead of trying to learn about the food, what they do instead is: “Well, I’ll just eat chicken and broccoli. I’ll eat white fish and asparagus. I’ll eat 99% lean hamburger.”

Yeah, okay, those can help. But the problem is this: if you don’t balance your budget in a way, where you feel like I can do this for the rest of my life, I’m still able to do those things and eat those things that I love, I’m still able to go to dinner with my wife or my husband and have a glass of wine and have a dessert, I’m still able to go on vacation and eat some things that I wouldn’t normally eat.

I’m still able to go and have holiday dinners, holiday meals with my family without being the weirdo who’s got to pack their meal. Because you can eat the same food that your parents are eating if you knew more about the food, but you’ve got to learn this stuff. It’s not easy to learn. You’ve got to read nutrition information on labels, you’ve got to learn what’s a better source of protein.

You’ve got to learn that a ribeye steak is 50% fat when it comes to where the calories come from. Most people think it’s just protein. I tell this example all the time: if we’re in business and you own 50% of the business and I own 50% of the business, is it really your business? No, it’s our business. And that’s what it is with ribeye steak, for example, it’s about 50% protein, 50% fat, but you don’t know that unless you learn it. So you’ve got to learn how to balance the budget.

And the last thing I’ll say about this is that we all have meals that we don’t care about. I just need to shove some food in my face, so that hunger doesn’t distract me from what I need to do today. We all have those meals that we have, “Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to go out to this restaurant. I’m taking my wife, my husband out for dinner. It’s my daughter’s birthday and she want me to share a piece of cake with her.”

Are you really going to tell your daughter? “No, honey, Daddy, or Mommy is on a diet so he can’t eat the cake, she can’t eat the cake with you.” You’re screwing up if you’re doing that, you’re teaching your kids terrible...Your kids are going to come up with terrible issues with food. That’s not the way to do it. And if you learn how to balance this, you can have your cake and eat it too.

Lesson five is be results-oriented. So, if you’re making the changes, like Paul maybe hears this, he’s like, “Okay, well, I said I’m eating well during the week, but let me ensure journal or track on my Fitness Pal what I’m eating during the week, let me journal or track on My Fitness Pal what I’m eating on the weekend. Let me really get a handle on what’s going on and look for leverage on myself.

Where can I have the chicken and broccoli meal, which is a bonus tip, lean protein and veggies for the meals that you don’t care about, then enjoy the meals you do care about. Pretty easy – easy to do.

Well simple, but sometimes not easy, but be results-oriented. If you’re not getting results, then something else needs to change, be results-oriented. 

My best body transformation, or the person I consider to be my best body transformation, given what his starting point was, what his end point was, and how long he’s kept the weight off—Shout out to you, Jeff, if you’re listening—he told me this, he told me the number one lesson he learned from me was to be results-oriented.

But what that means is, don’t make excuses. It’s not your metabolism. It’s not post-menopause, pre-menopause, it’s none of those things. It’s your program isn’t all that. “I’m tracking 1200 calories on My Fitness Pal, I’ not losing weight.” No, something’s off, you’re not doing it right if you’re not getting results.

Now our metabolism does slow down after 60. But it’s like 0.8% per year, it’s not a huge amount. So if you’re under 70, you don’t have a good excuse here. If you’re under 70, you don’t have it...If you’re in your 40s, the only thing that slowed down is your ability, your awareness to realize how sedentary you are and how many calories you eat and how much how many calories you drink, and how much exercise you’re really doing per day.

Be results-oriented, don’t give yourself a way out. And there’s no pressure here. If you don’t want to do any of this, don’t do it. But don’t make excuses, be results oriented. 

And if you’re not getting results, you’re not doing the right thing. So either you need to challenge yourself, to change what you’re doing to get results, or just relax about it. No pressure here, don’t let society tell you you need to look a certain way, or be a certain way.

But don’t be in that middle where you’re like, “Oh, god, oh,” you’re unhappy, but not willing to change. It’s a terrible place to be, so be results-oriented. And six is try this stuff out on your own. But if you’re like a lot of people who end up coming to me, you’ve been doing this for years, and you haven’t figured it out.

So realize, if you haven’t figured it out for years, you’re going to need help to figure this out. It’s as simple as that. I even needed help when, in 2019, I knew how to get in shape in America, but I was in Bangkok, Thailand. And before that, I was in Bali, Indonesia, the food is different, the food environments different. You don’t just get non-fat Greek yogurt at the supermarket.

That’s not a thing that is easy to find in Asia, you have to change the foods, you have to know what’s in the food. And that goes back to what I talked about earlier, you’ve got to know what’s in your food, the calories, you’ve got to know what’s lean, what’s not lean. And through coaching, I was able to get down to a really low body fat and maintain it.

In fact, if you look at the thumbnail for this podcast, that was taken in Bangkok. I actually got leaner than that, when I was in Colombia. When I was in Colombia, it was a different food environment; very different than Asia, completely different. And then in Brazil, this year, for eight months. It’s tricky.

But because of the coaching that I did, because of the training myself, learning about food, the tracking of food, the weighing and measuring of food, the understanding of food that I got, I was able to adapt to every single environment that I was in, but I don’t think I would have been able to do it on my own. In fact, I hadn’t. I say I don’t think I would have been able to, but the fact is, I wasn’t able to.

I didn’t have the accountability. I didn’t have the motivation. I didn’t have the talks, the talks with my coach. I can’t wait to have him on the podcast. Eric, if you’re listening, we’ve got to set that up. Those talks really helped educate me change my perspective. He taught me things and held me accountable to behaviors that I wasn’t doing before. And you know what, it worked out for me, to the point where I don’t need a coach now.

I’m getting lean right now, because I’m going to Mexico this week—so excited, can’t wait. In fact, by the time you listen to this, I’ll probably already be in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, I’m going to be eating guacamole tacos, tacos from Don Sirloin—can’t wait, eating a lot of good food there. And it’s going to be different than Brazil or Colombia or America. I’m in Miami right now.

And if I hadn’t done the coaching, I wouldn’t have this level of understanding of food. And if you’re struggling with this, the truth is, the years that you’ve been trying are a good representation of the years to come in terms of results. In other words, you’re probably just going to get more of the same.

And I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s about whether you think that’s wrong or not, whether that’s a problem for you or not. And if it is, you need help to figure it out. It’s the best thing that I can tell you, hire a coach. I hired a coach for Twitter, I paid thousands of dollars for someone to help me write better tweets and to help me grow my Twitter, I paid even more for business coaching for a year to take my business to the next level.

Coaching is...it’s not easy and it’s not fast, but it is the easiest, and fastest way to get the results that you want. However, it comes with a price tag, and you’ve got to ask yourself, is it really worth it to you? How much is this worth to you? But if it’s worth a lot, then it’s the best way to get results for some of you, you’re just here and you’re dabbling, and that’s cool.

But for those of you who have the burning desire, and you’re trying to figure this out on your own, and you’re not getting results, and you have years of the same behavior patterns, hiring coach is the way out of that.

That’s all I’ve got for today. I hope you enjoyed this. I can’t wait to give you an update from Mexico. I’m so excited. I have such a great trip planned for myself. We’re going to get a lot done business wise, I’m going to go diving, cool things are going to happen. Can’t wait to share that with you.

And also I’m going to be working more on my business, really getting to work, taking advantage of the business coaching that I become a part of recently and just stepping this up and delivering even more value for you. Can’t wait.

I hope you enjoyed this. Have an amazing weekend, and I’ll speak to you on Monday.